Guitars and Life

I turn 50 in just under 2 months.  But looking at the stats on the blog I have 50 followers, welcome to the 50th!  Also just gone through 50,000 page views. I read a couple of blog posts about loneliness today.  Interesting isn't it that we live in a world where we can all stay connect much better than we ever used to - we were trying to explain to the kids how my wife and I kept in touch when we were courting... er we met each other!  We did luckily have phones at home, we got one when I was about 16 I think - honestly up until then I'd have to use the pay phone over the road on the little green.  But it is interesting that I think loneliness is on the increase despite all this.  My daughter have 100s of "friends" on Facebook and Twitter - but truth is she doesn't know hardly any of them.  On here many people read and comment and I have a blog roll I visit, people I find interesting or we have a common bound, sometimes music, often recovery.  ...

Around the web on blogs, newsites, twitter etc. there is an outpouring of tributes to Davy Jones of The Monkees who sadly passed away this week.  However sad his parting, and really 66 was too young, spare a thought for PC David Rathband who also was found dead this week .  PC Rathband is the man who was shot in the face and blinded by Raul Moat.  (Sad isn't it that the person who committed the crime against him is a more known name than the man left so badly injured.) From reading the reports it looks like PC Rathband took his own life in some way.  How very very sad.  I read things like that and I instantly feel so sad.  This guy went to work one day and just because he was a policeman in the wrong place at the wrong time ended up horrendously injured.  Since his injury he had set up a charity to help serviceman like himself injured in the line of duty.  However there are documented interviews with him where he stated that he was frustrated by...

My "Things I am Grateful for Today" list thing on the right stopped working.  I couldn't add anything to it - I wonder if my list of gratitude got too big for Blogger to cope with?  Shame as you can't have too much gratitude surely?  Anyway after several attempts, browser swaps, deleting things out of it etc. I decided to take the technical blog crowbar to it and deleted and created a new one!  Solved! Okay the one thing any sharp eyed readers will notice is that after yesterdays procrastination update in which I had to admit that the book I'd bought (and by the way I deliberately bought the one that was the shortest pretty much of those recommended to me by various people on the basis that that would make me read it!) was still "sat on the shelf" (well the to be read list on my Kindle) - anyway I started it yesterday!  Hooray! Hmm just thought of something to update my gratitude list and that is that I'm still keeping up the swimming regime - I...

I was privileged to witness a beautiful sunrise over Kent this morning whilst sat on the 7:20 to St Pancras.  The sky we a collage of orange, blue and pink.  At one point on the journey, whilst in a cutting you can just glimpse the Shri Guru Nanak Darbar Gurdwara at Gravesend if you look up out of the window.  As I saw that amazing sunrise behind the temples turrets I thought to myself  "People will travel half way around the world for the seek out sites similar to that, and here it is on my doorstep". I often forget to be open to seeing what is around me on a daily basis and being grateful for that.  It is constant work trying to banish the feelings of resentment and ingratitude for the things I think I don't have.

I was going to post about the economy, the Chancellor's statement (Osborne, not Valorum, though you might think we've gone over the dark side given the perilous state of everything), the strike, the debt mountain - I started typing it on the way into work after reading the paper.   But frankly is was a miserable post that concluded we are all doomed, capitalism is reaching it's ultimate zenith of a small number with huge wealth and the rest of us fighting for existence from the scraps from their tables.  So I binned it - what's the point? Now what is worth talking about is that I went to a meeting last night I've not been to in ages.  No real reason except that family circumstances make Tuesday less than ideal for me to be out that night every week.  I had been invited along by the secretary to be the speaker.  Now 6 years or so ago this was one of my "home groups" I was secretary myself and the guy who is now secretary was himself a struggling newcomer w...

I have to be honest my equilibrium was a bit awry at the beginning of the week.  I know some of this was due to the riots - it really did affect me emotionally, I was frankly scared, I don't think for my own personal safety/wellbeing but for my countries, my communities etc.  I still feel that there is much much more to be learnt from all this.  Sadly there was a protest at the start of this that may have had something political, something about social inequality and about how we communicate with groups and society.  But the vast majority of what has been shown is just wanton looting, theft, violence and causing damage for damage sake.  Then to try to justify this people talk about the lack of opportunity and that they were trying to take from the rich.  Lost on that argument - why were you attacking shops owned by people in your own communities then?  Even attacking the large conglomerates makes no sense in that argument as the people who will suffer ...

So I was very annoyed with myself over the Bank Rant etc. the other week... btw they have cocked some else up now! But this time I'm trying take it calmly. It annoyed me that little things, or maybe they were big things I don't know but whatever they got in my head, disturbed my peace of mind and caused me to be focused on negative thoughts. I just remembered a quote I should have remembered in the middle of all this. I can't get peace of mind while I am giving out a piece of my mind. Some good stuff is happening - my son has his new flat, his 21st is on the near horizon, my daughter has two holidays one with the school - oh sorry that is GCSE PE trip... to SPAIN!!! and the other with her best friend and her family. There is some other good stuff floating around as well that I'll not share just yet. But I'm trying to focus on the open(ing) doors not the closed ones. Also on a daily basis I'm working on my gratitude. I have so much, the family, my health, I...

I have access to Tescobank again!!! Now given my first denied access (due in fairness then to their planned upgrade) was Friday 17th June (I thought the upgrade black out was for the 18th and 19th only) and it took until the evening of 27th June that is by my Maths 10 days!!! Anyway - I shall stop whinging on about it now. One of those irritating issues that really get in my head. Often I hear people who are recovering alcoholics like me saying things like "I can manage the big things in life, deaths, divorce, redundancy, serious illness. However a broken shoelace or a dropped plate will send me back to the drink". I really really appreciate that concept after the last week or so. Little things but little things that get in my head - the Tescobank thing, the PC dying - of course just when I knew a backup was outstanding. So now I'm just so worried about getting the data back. Again that isn't an issue actually - I need to buy a disc caddy thing for about £15 an...

or... trying to slay the beast of self pity. The news of my colleague yesterday did really hit me. Poor bloke lost a young child some years back as well - as seems to be the way of the world the bad luck sometimes doesn't seem so generously spread around. So I'm trying to work on my gratitude. I'll update my list in a moment, but the obvious ones are,sobriety, health, family, where I live (i.e. England compare it to much of Africa, or say North Korea... yep not so bad is it?), wealth, warmth, somewhere to live... etc. See I have simply so much to be grateful for. I might be being made redundant but as a friend of mine says "this company doesn't throw people on the scrapheap; it lays them on it gently". I love his humour, but in that it means my compensation payment is very generous, I've a load of shares that I can also cash in without Tax and NI liability and I'm getting all this help from the outplacement company. I'm off on a course about settin...

So I sat down to work today and was faced with a bunch of the usual nonsense... the confused and bewildered going round in corporate ever decreasing circles. It riled me. I had to stop and ask why I'm angry about it - to be honest it is just the normality of work these days, everybody means well and are all trying to do their best I just seem to see it all as a set of circles that either benignly never intersect, very rarely to combine successfully or sometimes just smash into each other with various degrees of force and damage to those in those circles. So given that gratitude was a strong theme at an AA meeting I attended last night I'm working on my gratitude to placate the rising anger. Yesterday I spoke with a couple of people I've not caught up with for a while. One is having a really stressful time, her Mum is in her 80s and had a hip replacement but then got some viral issue, lost loads of weight and has been very ill. Also in her family a lady was stung by a wasp ...

I was looking at my gratitude list today thinking to myself "I haven't updated that since the weekend". I then notice that I'd put on there over the weekend "New DAB radio for the kitchen". So yes I'm grateful for that as it has replaced the very old and knackered cassette/CD/radio boom box we'd had for years with something that sounds much better and much smaller and won't mean all that fiddling about trying to tune into Radio Kent on snow days to find out if the school is shut just go to the menu and press a button and Radio Kent is there. Plus I get to listen to Kerrang or Planet Rock while I'm cooking :-) But I digress; I was disappointed that I'd put that on there actually, it's a small and materialistic thing, nice yes but in the grand scheme of stuff not that relevant. So I took a few minutes to contemplate about what I am truly grateful for. If the DAB radio wasn't there my life would be unaffected. So I got to thinking......

I was studying the summary of the governments inequality report that was reported in the press earlier this week. Now I know that in regards of the whole world's population I (like most really in this country) is extremely well off. I also know I pretty well off and well paid compared with the average in the country. However what surprised me was how well off I am in comparison to a lot of people in this country - I was further up the tables than I was expecting. See whilst I live in a "nice" house in a "nice" area and we have food on the table, clothes in the wardrobe, warmth in the radiators, can afford some luxuries and don't really have to scrimp to make ends meet I'm not exactly Rockefeller you know. I don't live in a mansion, my kids go to state schools, my fleet of automobiles is actually one that is a company car anyway and the other a 1.4 little town runabout for the Mrs... not a Ferrari, Rolls, Bentley etc. in sight. I'm comfortable yes...

I watched a programme last night about people who suffer with Tourettes . This was the third in a long running series following a Scottish guy that started with him living with his Mum and family in the 1980s when he was a teenager. In the subsequent programmes they have followed another sufferer who is now himself 15 the same age as John was in the original programme. I’m so lucky I don’t suffer with something like this illness and neither do any of my family, although it is a running family gag that Mrs F suffers from it particularly when she goes into a rant about someone, notably weather presenters. In the programme John the older guy was in near tears as he reflected on his extremely lonely teenage years when he couldn’t forge any friendships with anyone. He hasn’t been able to find a partner and he spoke about how just getting to work which is a 10 min walk is an achievement for him. He works as a caretaker at the local community hall and clearly takes immense pride in his job. Y...

Yesterday was an odd day… just read the previous post. So I’m attempting a little restart of stuff here now. This morning I had to go to the dentist, “Vlad the Incisor” I call him. Nice chap – Polish I believe, so the Vlad gag fails as that is nowhere near Transylvania still never mind. He poked around as usual and told me there were no problems except Tartar build up on my bottom teeth. He cleaned them, then he was flossing them for me and exclaimed. “Difficult to floss, No?” “Yes it is sometimes”. My teeth are all a bit cramped together. So he has recommended a different brush, so I headed off to the store to buy one, then headed for work. On the longest stretch on the motorway between junctions I see the ominous red lights and hazard warning lights. We all came to a grinding halt and in a few seconds you could hear the sirens. I was stuck for about an hour – some poor lady had gone into the back of a lorry somehow and when they started to clear us through the top of the c...